From: Gregory Alan Bolcer (gbolcer@endtech.com)
Date: Fri Jan 12 2001 - 11:02:51 PST
I have one master machine that is my work desktop. I use
Netscape to download the mail from a pop server to a local
machine and it get split up into various folder. All other
Netscape clients have "leave messages on server" checked so that
there's only one unique machine that actually pops the mail
off the mail server. I have a Magi server--which is just an
Apache server with security permissions--that serves up my
mail folder under a private directory. From any other machine,
I simply click on the folder I want and save it into the local
Netscape folder before launching the local Netscape. It launches
with all my email in that folder with the latest copy. I can incorporate
the latest email into the folder and remove things at will that don't
reach my imporance threshold as I know I always have a copy waiting
to be incorporated back on my work desktop. Sometimes I even zip
up the whole mail archive and download it around to all my machines--I do
that particularly when I am behind in email and need my whole email archive
on my laptop for when I travel. This works far better than IMAP and keeping
the mail on our mail server as I have enough space locally, can make
my own archives and backups and serve and edit them using HTTP/DAV
rather than IMAP. In fact, it's been long rumored that the new MS
mail client will support DAV rather than IMAP.
Before I switched off of MH, my MH folder used to be the one that
the "full" archive existed and instead of using Win tools to do
backups, I'd just do the backups using tar and gzip.
The one problem I've found that you seem to have stumbled upon is
that MH archives and Netscape archives don't seem to be able to
speak nicely to each other, so you need to keep one or the other.
fgrep on your Mail directory with scripts doing the post inc sorting
is super fast if you are using a unix machine as your desktop. Using
Netscape's searching functions are easier if your archive is primarily
stored on your Winbox. I have 24 top level folders in Netscape and
they go down deepest 3 levels with probably about 100 subfolders. I have
about 40 filters that pre-sort most stuff that I can't be bothered with
immediately, and I do hand resorting by searching the inbox and refiling
bunches of messages when it gets too big.
Inbox - sorted by date and priority
Unsent Messages - seldom used, never do email offline unless really have to
Drafts - sometimes used for unfinished emails or ones I decide not to send
Templates - never use
Sent - never use
Trash
Actions - high priority things that need immediate actions
Competitors - email related to all our business competitors and analysis
Contacts - business like contacts out of the blue for information
Customers - subfolders of all the contacts for every customer we have
Development - all the development related list and sublists including internal
external, nightly build results, etc.
Endeavors - Sorted Person by person folders of everyone workign at Endeavors
Events - any conference, planning, org comitte, workshop, etc. related email sorted
by event names
Faxes - big honking efaxes that come in as tifs
Funds - all the CI, VC, and Angels related to Endeavors fundraising
Legal - all the laywers I've had to deal with for acquisition, patents, sorted by firm
Lists - every single mailing list I'm on, and sometime clean out as they are all
archived someplace else.
Consumate
Decentralization
(Java) Devices
Ebiz (IBM and E-Commerce Mangement) I'm too lazy to separte the two lists
and the filter wasn't specific enough
ECDL - old Harley crypto list and also distribued.net stuff (lazy again)
FoRK - huge email archive
Harmon
IntelWG
Jakarta
JavaSun
Jini - hodgepodge of Jini project lists.
MediaMap - thinking of bailing on this one; high noise to signal ratio
for pending news stories
Mitchell - Mitchell Levy's list; go buy his book E-Volve or Die.
Mobile - Java Mobile
P2P
Phone - Phone.com, I guess I have to rename this Openwave as my filter's broken
SGI - only good for hardware announcements of refurbished SGI 17" flatscreens
SNS - pay to play, but I have at least 10 issues I haven't even read
TBTF - gud stuff
Vigilante - unsubscribe; LA local underground Webheads
WebDAV - hodgepodge of DAV lists & links
WIT - defunct WIT Capital list
XML - hodgepodge of XML lists
Magi - Cluetrain like person by person lists of anyone sending me Magi comments and feedback
Personal - person by person personal emails
Press - any and all press contacts
Purchase - any email receipts and tracking for any online purchases
Recruiting - resumes, interview schedules, etc.
Research - Class projects, university type email, non-commercial development
Return - anything that I need to BCC myself on for record that doesn't get filed to another
folder related to that subject
Shareholders - Endeavors shareholders (not TAD ones though)
Support - anything related to software installs, network registrations, DNS, etc.
Tadpole - anyone at Tadpole that I communicate with sorted person by person
Unsorted - anything that might be spam, failed FoRK messages, autoresponders, etc.
news.services.uci.edu - keep getting rid of it but Netscape keeps putting it back.
So, what this give me is the ability to handle up to about
1200 messages a day and keep on top of everything.
Greg
ps. Cure for cancer, two limes, two shots of tequila and
small, doctor controlled prescription of certain types of
weed killer which has had shown some promising results in
laboratory testing at DOW chemical which has shown
semi-effective in petri dish use of cancerous fibrilary tangles.
[1] http://xent.ics.uci.edu/FoRK-archive/oct97/0787.html
> Other than commenting on the Whitehead Institute,
> I would like to relate a story that I read on GMSV.
> Two scientists at DOW chemical were working on their
> respective chemical modelings, one for cancer research
> one for weed killers. One sat down at the wrong terminal
> in their lab and found that their chemical makeups
> were extremely similar. They are now testing weed killers
> as cancer cures as it seems to kill tumors as well as
> dandelions.
John Klassa wrote:
>
> >>>>> On Thu, 11 Jan 2001, "Gregory" == Gregory Alan Bolcer wrote:
>
> Gregory> The single most compelling reason? I can download the whole
> Gregory> mail archive or different folders and sync them up with my
> Gregory> imac, PC at home, PC at work, SGI, or Sony laptop and have
> Gregory> a huge knowledge management mining vein so that when I am
> Gregory> sitting anywhere, I can pretend I know WTF I am talking about
> Gregory> as I can do expert searches on any subject that I track. 8-)
>
> What applications do you use? I'd like to have a nice, syncable (among
> several machines) archive, but get bogged down in the details. If I use
> POP to fetch the mail to machine A and view it with Outlook, then want
> to have access to all of the mail I have stored in MH, and also have
> access to the mail I've been reading with Pine (and on and on), is there
> a reasonable way to make sense of all of it and have it nicely available
> and indexed (and whatever)? And in such a way that I can dump it all
> onto my laptop (or sync it, somehow), so that I can do anything from
> anywhere?
>
> Got a cure for cancer, while you're at it? :-)
>
> John
>
> --
> John Klassa / Cisco Systems, Inc. / RTP, NC / USA / klassa@cisco.com / <><
> [ Save bits! Don't quote entire threads in your reply. ]
-- Gregory Alan Bolcer | gbolcer@endtech.com | work: 949.833.2800 Chief Technology Officer | http://www.endtech.com | cell: 714.928.5476 Endeavors Technology, Inc. | efax: 603.994.0516 | wap: 949.278.2805
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